B2B Market Analysis
Czesca Group's Approach
Customer meetings and industry articles can keep B2B business leaders informed, but without market analysis, it can be difficult to see industry trends and foresee shifts in areas such as buyer behavior, regulatory influences, and competitors’ strategies. Yet, many organizations continue to press toward the next quarter’s goals without analysis.
How do you know if you need improved market analysis?
If you answer yes to any of the following questions, Czesca Group’s market analysis can help.
Does your strategy routinely whipsaw with surprise market developments?
Do initiatives seem reactive and unrelated to a longer-term strategy?
Is decision-making frequently based on anecdotes and strong personalities instead of data and trend analysis?
Roadblocks to incorporating market analysis in business processes
Most leaders can tell that their business and marketing processes should contain more analysis, but their calendar and budget haven’t allowed them to fix the issue. Czesca Group understands that real roadblocks to conducting sound market analysis exist. Many organizations may lack
the skillset to analyze markets;
a market analysis process;
the budget to staff a marketing intelligence function; or
the bandwidth to institute organizational change.
Does your strategy routinely whipsaw with surprise market developments?
B2B Market Analysis Services
To help B2B marketers incorporate sound market analysis in their processes, Czesca Group offers services for analyzing industries, competitors, and buyers. We gather and turn data into actionable insight in the form of marketing plans, competitive assessments, forecasts, and more.
We can help with one of your initiatives or be a part of your team on an ongoing basis. We can also adjust as your needs change.
The five types of analysis that we offer for a given B2B market or product are:
Business Buyer & Demand Analysis
Competitor Analysis
Industry Analysis
Organization Internal Analysis
SWOT Analysis (requires completion of other four analyses)
Market Analysis Scope
All of our analyses start with defining the scope of the analysis. Are we analyzing a product or a solution category? What are the geographical boundaries? Are their size constraints of deals, customers, or competitors? These and similar questions set the “field of play” for which an organization wants to achieve an objective. Analyses, strategies, and implementation all occur within the context of this defined market scope. The scope may be adjusted as other analyses introduce new information such as a refinement in the target market.
Business Buyer and Demand Analysis
An analysis of business buyers seek to understand demand qualitatively (i.e., Who are the buyers? How and why do they buy?) and quantitatively (i.e. what is the size of the market or opportunity).
Qualitative Analysis
Business Buying Behavior
Qualitative Analysis should clarify the target market, including characteristics of the buying organization and the buying center within the organization. This buying center usually includes initiators, gatekeepers, influencers, deciders, purchasers, and users. The buying process may also need clarification if it has unique characteristics.
Target Market Segmentation
The target market should be divided into addressable segments using practical and useful criteria in a business context. Industry, organization size, and use case are common criteria.
Identifying key use cases or problem/solution scenarios helps differentiate target market segments. Additionally, technology products often have technology environment constraints that can further dictate addressable target markets. These need to be considered along with any coupled products from other suppliers that may limit or widen addressable markets.
Quantitative Analysis – Market and Opportunity Sizing
We also conduct research to help a company better understand the size of a market or opportunity. Knowing the addressable market for a given use case or market segment can help a company better prioritize its efforts and more efficiently deploy limited resources.
Competitor Analysis
Czesca Group helps companies identify, categorize, research, and analyze competitors and their offerings, giving clients the insight they need to make data-driven product and strategy decisions.
Segmenting Competitors
There are three main categories of competitors: primary, secondary, and what we consider wallet-share competitors—seemingly unrelated competitors who compete for dollars allocated to your solution space.
There may be additional characteristics that help segment competitors. Clients often find our competitive matrices (charts that plot competitors along 2 or more axes) helpful in illustrating competitors by category to interested audiences.
Competitor Profiles
While competitive matrices help companies understand the landscape, a more thorough analysis of 2-3 key competitors and their offerings helps an organization better understand where and why they win or lose. We include 5 analyses as part of our deep-dive competitor analysis:
Product Analysis
Marketing Strategy Analysis
Partner Strategy Analysis
Company Analysis
Competitor SWOT Analysis (conclusions drawn from the other four analyses)
Competitive Product Analysis
Czesca Group works with product development teams to review competitive offerings, identifying and assessing features and functionality that matter most to a given market segment. The service often includes price/value analysis data when practical. Market performance and market share are also researched as part of the analysis.
Competitor Marketing Strategy Analysis
It's useful to review competitors’ value propositions and positioning to your target customer. How does their marketing strategy stack up against the priorities of business buyers? We research online presence, keywords, and sales materials to help companies better understand a competitor’s marketing approach.
Competitive Partner Strategy Analysis
How does a competitor go to market? Have they emphasized value-added resellers or looked to other solutions and integrations to complete their offering? Does their approach vary by geography, industry, or deal size? We help you research and analyze the partnering strategies of your competitors.
Business buyers frequently have problems that require several components across multiple companies to make a complete solution. Companies may find themselves competing, not only for customers but for valuable partners. These factors and more are considered when analyzing competitive partner strategies.
Competitive Company Analysis
Competitive analysis doesn’t just include products, the competitive company should also be analyzed. Financials, credit standing, sales momentum, and personnel changes all can reveal information about the strength and momentum of competitors.
Competitor SWOT Analysis
After analyzing a competitor’s company, offerings, and go-to-market strategy, the data generally tells a story about what the company wants to achieve, how they plan to do it, and some of the risks involved. This story can be summarized in a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) Analysis.
Industry Environment Analysis
Czesca Group helps companies analyze trends and the macro-environment of their industry. Government regulations, socioeconomic factors, and even labor skill shortages may impact b2b markets. Analyzing these factors is generally referred to as a “PEST” analysis: the acronym for Political, Environmental, Social, and Technological industry trends. Identifying these trends and considering their impact on an organization’s business is particularly important when formulating opportunities and threats.
Organization Internal Analysis
Czesca Group helps B2B companies analyze their own operations from a go-to-market perspective and value delivery perspective for target buyers.
Similar to the deep dive on key competitors, we include these 3 analyses as part of our internal analysis of an organization:
Product Analysis
Marketing Strategy Analysis
Partner Strategy Analysis
Product Analysis
Czesca Group works with product development teams to review their offerings vs. competitors, identifying and assessing features and functionality that matter most to a given market segment. The service includes a price/value analysis as well as market share research.
Marketing Strategy Analysis
A review of the company’s value propositions and positioning to target buyers is next. We also assess the company's online presence and sales materials to see how well a clear and compelling value proposition is being communicated.
Partner Strategy Analysis
Czesca Group helps companies analyze their partner strategy and its effectiveness. Is the company going direct to customers, using Value-added-resellers, or relying on related products to co-sell its solution? We have experience in building global distribution structures for b2b technology firms and can do the same for you.
SWOT Analysis
After completing the components of market analysis, Czesca Group summarizes the insight into an overall Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) Analysis. Data becomes actionable insight that can then be used to set objectives, strategies, and plans.